Black Swan Dreaming: Ben’s Perth Dekerf

It’s nearly 15,000kms from Perth, the capital of Western Australia, to Vancouver, the most populated city in Canada. That makes Ben’s Dekerf a widely-travelled ride already, but he’s doing his best to accrue much more distance upon it.

Perth is one of the most isolated capitals in the world, and there’s plenty of good road riding to be had. Ben Phillips was wrenching as a part-time mechanic a couple of years ago at Cycles Bespoke in Bayswater whose principal is Chris Jones.

Chris is good mates with Chris Dekerf — they’re both from Vancouver — and having previous dealings with the Canadian builder, Jonesey is effectively the most remote Dekerf dealer in the world.

The opportunity for a Dekerf at staff prices was too good for Ben to pass up, so he took the bait and paid a deposit for a steel road frame. Jonesey sized him up at the shop and, having experience as a builder himself, sent the geometry and spec in CAD off to Dekerf.

Jonesy was flying back to Vancouver for Christmas and returned with Ben’s frame and another Dekerf that was in for a repaint — Dekerf paints his own frames, too. The Black Swan, Cygnus atratus, is both the state bird and state emblem of WA and Ben’s Dekerf, unintentionally or not, bears a striking resemblance to the elegant waterfowl.

The TIG welded Reynolds 853 frame has a Columbus Life seat tube and a fillet brazed seat post binder, which Ben had seen quite randomly on what turned out to be one of Jonesy’s frames, on the road about a year previously.

Ben tells us, “I actually had to pull up to the rider and ask him about it, it was just so sublime. So I hoped to incorporate this and added it to the build spec. Apparently, it was quite involved internally and took some creative thinking on Dekerf’s part for a reliable result, but it’s come out beautifully.”

Ben is a graphic designer, aimed for a minimal paint scheme, and even tweaked the kerning on the Dekerf logo, but now he’s riding something that satisfies his eye whenever he’s riding it, and whenever he hops off. Special thanks to Ben for the photos.